Clutter Control

     One of the biggest chores a stay-at-home dad faces is picking up clutter.  Shoes, backpacks, books, brushes, crayons, coats, jackets, toys—it seems like a never-ending battle to try to find a place for everything and to keep everything in its place.

     Here are a few things I’ve learned on the topic of clutter control:

1.      Pick up clutter daily.  That way it won’t get so bad that you give up on it.  I like to do my clutter control in the mornings so the house is orderly for the rest of the day.  I guess I could do it at night before I go to bed, but I’m usually so tired at that point that mornings are a better option for me.

Clutter:  if your house looks this this, you've waited too long.

2.      Use a clutter basket.  I used to put clutter away as I picked it up, but this meant dozens of trips across the house to the same places.  I’d pick up Andy’s shoes, for instance, take them to his room, then find a baseball bat two minutes later and have to trek back to his room.  Now I carry around a laundry basket and pick up all the clutter before I start to put it away.

The amazing clutter basket.

3.      Take clean-up breaks.  If you have young children, who like to play with lots of different toys at once, take a break every hour or so and have them help you tidy things up.  If they’ve tired of the Lincoln Logs, put them away.  If the Play-Doh is starting to get hard, but it back in the plastic containers.  I’ve found that kids actually enjoy doing this.  Once the toy room or family room is tidied up, they have a “clean slate” to mess up again.  And you don’t end up having to put away every toy they own when play time is over.

Clean-up breaks take you from this...

...to this.

4.      Organize kids’ rooms so they know where things go.  Kids can get overwhelmed with clutter the same way dads do.  And if they don’t know where to put things, it doesn’t do much good to tell them to pick things up. 

          A couple of weeks ago, I asked Andy to clean up and organize his closet.  To my surprise, he actually got excited about the challenge and dug right in.  He ended up throwing away a ton of things he no longer wanted, which left more space for everything else, and when he was finished, the closet looked like a well organized display at a department store:  baseball hats stacked neatly, all the clothes on hangers, toys carefully lined up on shelves. 

          Now that there’s a place for everything, it’s easy for him (and me—okay, it’s usually me, but he really was responsible for the closet organization) to put things in their place.